Chapter 36

Seo-jun shrugged his shoulders and launched a new game.

“Thank you for the donation. Now let’s move on to the next game.”

-Oh here we go

-Really?

-What could it be?

The background flipped and the world changed.

The previous game, ‘Assassin’s Dawn,’ had dark backgrounds with tall buildings sprouting up like bamboo shoots after rain, but the game he’d just launched was different.

Like bamboo shoots after rain—literally, bamboo was sprouting up.

It was green.

That was Seo-jun’s first impression of the game.

Birds chirped and a panda started rolling around.

A hill thick with vegetation was the starting point.

Seo-jun first tried moving his body in place.

He stretched and swung his arms around.

“…Hmm, perfect.”

Thanks to Surface, which managed both capsules and virtual reality, the sensation of diving into virtual reality hadn’t changed, but movement speed varied according to set values.

And this game seemed to have made an effort to give a feeling as close to reality as possible.

The fluttering robes and the faint sound of a qin evoked nostalgic emotions.

Meanwhile, viewers began getting excited as they recognized the game.

-Wait, is this For the Murim?

-Basically no honor lol that game?

-That martial arts-obsessed game?

-Wow. It’s an online game!!!

-Let’s go!

As expected.

They recognized it just from seeing the starting point.

“As you all guessed, this game is For the Murim.”

For the Murim.

Another game from MovieSoft, the genre being martial arts action, set in the murim where three major forces—orthodox faction, unorthodox faction, and demonic cult—clash against each other.

It had reached #1 in concurrent users on release day, and even now several years later, though it had declined somewhat, it was still enjoying mid-to-upper tier popularity.

And despite having mid-to-upper tier popularity, the fact that the game was extremely hardcore was another major characteristic.

<For the Murim> – 385,000 currently watching

<Assassin’s Dawn> – 270,000 currently watching

These were the current Travel viewer numbers.

For the Murim consistently maintained the upper 300,000s.

Assassin’s Dawn had hit 800,000 just a week ago, but that was thanks to major corporate streamers who moved in units of hundreds of thousands.

Now that they weren’t playing it, those numbers had dropped.

‘But that doesn’t mean Assassin’s Dawn was a wrong choice.’

No, it was actually the optimal choice.

‘Ten thousand people are watching my stream right now.’

Wait a minute.

Ten thousand?

The stream viewer count was incredibly high.

What’s this?

He calmly checked the viewer distribution.

“4,000 foreign viewers? Huh, what’s going on?”

-Hm? What’s that?

-The viewer count really is high

-I was frustrated keeping it to myself since mentioning viewer count was banned until the streamer brought it up

-Oh what

-4,000 foreign viewers? Crazy

It wasn’t common for foreign viewers to watch streams.

While technology had advanced enough for voices to be auto-translated, cultures were different, and things like game screens within streams weren’t translated.

In other words, they had just temporarily flocked here.

Soon Seo-jun was able to guess the reason.

“Ah. It must be because of Training Hall.”

-Probably lol

-Training Hall’s influence is insane

-Hyung, are you going to become world-class now?

World-class, hardly.

Seo-jun chuckled and fiddled with the streaming window.

‘Well, this gives me something to say to advertisers too, right?’

Good things were good things, Seo-jun thought.

A paid advertisement notification appeared on the stream.

“So today’s game is sponsored.”

-Oh???

-Already doing ads?

-Advertising the next work! Truly a monster born of capitalism

-But why advertise For the Murim? Is there some event?

-MovieSoft advertising means you’re really going world-class!

Viewers didn’t seem particularly displeased.

“Haha, right. But everyone, I won’t just quit this game right after the ad ends. Even if it wasn’t sponsored, I was thinking I wanted to try For the Murim.”

He was sincere.

It was a martial arts setting after all.

Skills were called martial arts too.

Honestly it was a bit awkward, but it would be fun to reminisce and enjoy the atmosphere.

-Lol

-Even better

-So how long will you play it?

“How long will I play? Until I get bored.”

Seo-jun made an expression like ‘what kind of obvious question is that?’

-Still consistent even when games change lmao

-Probably won’t change even if public opinion hits rock bottom

-Already went to rock bottom several times but just pushed through. When he went radio silent, when he skipped Christina lol

“Alright then. Let’s move. I should go to the village below the hill? No, to the city.”

Seo-jun slowly descended using the stairs on the side.

And next to him, a panda rolled sideways.

“Cute.”

It looked comfortable, but he didn’t follow it.

After reaching the bottom, he ran to get over the city wall.

But it was blocked.

-Immediately trying to climb walls lol

-Can’t get rid of his pickpocket habits

-Don’t do that here… I’m embarrassed lol

-I don’t know this person. Don’t make eye contact.

“Hey everyone, why are you trying to cut ties? That’s hurtful.”

Seo-jun turned his head to the side.

There was a path where people walked and an entrance.

He approached a guard warrior wearing a bamboo hat at the entrance.

When someone approached, the guard lifted his bamboo hat with his finger and looked at Seo-jun.

The guard wearing the bamboo hat said,

“An adventurer from another world?”

Is this the concept?

Dimensional travel.

Well, he wasn’t curious about the worldbuilding.

“What is your name?”

Eventually a window appeared before Seo-jun’s eyes.

It was a window for setting his nickname.

-Go with Nameless here too, it suits you

-Probably Nameless

-But are you going orthodox faction?

-Unorthodox faction is the best, hypocrites lol

-Never go demonic cult. Just don’t go there when I tell you not to

Hmm.

People started taking sides again.

But he already had something decided.

The strangest guy in his past life and current life combined.

“I’ll go with Heavenly Demon.”

He couldn’t resist this.

[‘Heavenly Demon’—would you like to use this?]

“Yes.”

It didn’t have any special meaning.

He just thought it would be fun.

-Lol Heavenly Demon again

-Koreans’ love for Heavenly Demon

-How many Heavenly Demon there is now?

[This nickname is already in use.]

Ah.

“This was multiplayer, right? Of course the nickname would be taken already. Then Heavenly Demon2 would obviously exist too.”

Seo-jun casually started increasing the numbers.

Nicknames weren’t that important anyway.

[‘Heavenly Demon2’—would you like to use this?]

[‘Heavenly Demon3’—would you like to use this?]

[‘Heavenly Demon4’—would you like to use this?]

.

.

.

[‘Heavenly Demon14’—would you like to use this?]

“Yes.”

Just when he was getting tired of it.

He finally succeeded in creating a nickname.

Seo-jun’s nickname was decided as Heavenly Demon14.

“Yes, Heavenly Demon14. A very excellent nickname.”

Mmm!

The guard nodded and showed an impressed expression.

-Good at socializing lol

-Wow! 14 Heavenly Demons! They can make copies!

-Lol do you really have to be Heavenly Demon to this extent?

“So, Heavenly Demon14. Which faction would you like to fight for? By the way, you can change factions anytime. Of course, if you do that, all the contribution points you’ve built up in your previous faction will be reset to zero. Hahaha!”

The factions were, as explained earlier, orthodox faction, unorthodox faction, and demonic cult.

Generally, the orthodox faction refers to sects that walk the righteous path.

They value etiquette and morality and build up their martial arts steadily and solidly.

The unorthodox faction has a much stronger tendency to prioritize individual interests compared to the orthodox faction.

Most of them commit crimes like eating meals, or entire organizations make a living through crime.

There are also sects classified as unorthodox because their methods are too cruel.

And the demonic cult worships power.

Only power.

Everything else is not a consideration.

Etiquette? Morality? Status?

Everything is equal before strength.

For the Murim is praised for appropriately mixing these stereotypes to weave the game’s story and create good conflict scenarios.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Right, take your time looking around and decide!”

“Yes.”

Seo-jun entered the city.

He could see other users.

“Let’s try playing a game first. Ah, you’re asking if I’m not doing the tutorial? Nope.”

-No, this isn’t an RPG where you head straight for a new boss mob, at least look at some explanations

-Planning to carry like a dog as usual

-That’s why you get called tech-illiterate, you absolutely never read manuals no matter what

-For real LOL classic tech-illiterate behavior

How did they know he doesn’t read manuals? Truly mysterious.

“Well, it’s fine.”

The game matched people of similar skill levels anyway.

Seo-jun thought learning while playing was sufficient.

The viewers didn’t seem to agree though.

Seo-jun headed toward a massive building visible at the end of the main street.

Upon entering, an interface opened before his eyes to start matches.

“Hmm. The most popular game mode is…”

For the Murim had various game modes, but among them, the two most popular modes with the most people could be considered these,

Resembling fighting game format.

Sparring.

Sparring was a game mode where matches were randomly set as 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3.

And there was territorial control similar to MOBA format.

It was 4v4 but the game rules were somewhat complex.

“Let’s try territorial control.”

The most popular game mode among people was territorial control.

The reason was that sparring was entirely dependent on control skills, so it had entry barriers.

Of course, Seo-jun didn’t know this fact well and just chose territorial control because it had shorter queue times.

A match was found instantly.

“Oh. Here we go.”

* * *

-Ah! It’s a fill-in

-Someone rage quit from the start, what a bastard!

-Lol

[tip. Territorial control has capture points. You can continuously damage the enemy fortress based on how many points you control, so secure more points than the enemy.]

Seo-jun read the tooltip that appeared and looked around.

The place he was standing was a spawn location deep in a forest.

“If it’s a fill-in, that means I joined in the middle of a game?”

-Yeah

-Someone rage quit in the middle so that happened

-It’s a system that only exists in normal games

“Ah, I see. It looks like we’re losing for some reason.”

The scoreboard floating above.

[Blue: 217] vs [Red: 479]

The left side was his team’s fortress health.

“Hmm. My weapon is a basic sword. My skill is Three Calamities Sword Technique?”

It was martial arts that could be called the epitome of third-rate techniques.

Apparently if you don’t choose a faction, you start with these basic settings.

“Is the goal to destroy the fortress?”

There was definitely something more to it.

Seo-jun looked toward the front, toward the battlefield.

There were indicators showing capture point locations in the center and on both sides.

“Well, I’ll figure it out as I fight.”

He drew his sword with gleaming eyes.

He could see murim warriors and soldier NPCs appearing and heading toward the central path.

Seo-jun decided to follow them.

[tip. Put strength in your feet to use basic lightness skill! But lightness skill uses stamina and some internal energy, so frequent use will cause exhaustion!]

Soon.

He arrived at the point where enemy and friendly forces clashed.

NPCs began fighting fiercely at a distance where the central capture point was right next to them.

Seo-jun put strength in his feet.

More precisely, he put strength while imagining using something called internal energy.

In games with powers like mana or internal energy, this kind of imagination is important.

Don’t interfaces and settings menus get called up through imagination in the first place?

‘Internal energy.’

He felt a somewhat unfamiliar sensation and his movement speed increased.

When he kicked off the ground, he felt like he was gliding through the air and could move faster.

Seo-jun dove into the enemy ranks in that state.

‘Hmm, not familiar but not difficult to adapt to.’

Seo-jun moved as if sliding across the ground, dodging enemy attacks while simultaneously slashing their torsos.

-Oh lol a master from the start?

-Lightness skill is fucking hard when you first try it

-Always felt this way, but the streamer might not be a newbie

[Enemy fortress health -5]

A small message informed Seo-jun that he had reduced the enemy fortress health.

“You get minus 5 points for killing soldiers.”

Moving among the soldiers wasn’t exactly easy, but Seo-jun quickly started reducing their health.

He had definitely mastered the sensation of lightness skill.

[Enemy fortress health -5]

[Enemy fortress health -5]

[Enemy fortress health -5]

.

.

.

‘Are there no players?’

At some point, he felt that friendly soldiers far outnumbered enemy soldiers.

“Ah, here comes one.”

Seo-jun saw someone approaching from the left wearing distinctly different clothing.

He used lightness skill to quickly approach.

Since he was probably hiding among soldiers and launched a surprise attack, the enemy likely couldn’t spot Seo-jun.

This was why he had entered the chaotic battlefield from the beginning.

Having more information gave an absolute advantage after all.

The enemy had little health remaining. Even Seo-jun, who didn’t know basic attack damage, could tell it was enough to die in one hit.

And the enemy predictably couldn’t react to Seo-jun’s surprise attack.

But.

There was another important fact.

“Fuck! I died… What? We’re on the same team! Hey you bastard!”

[tip. In For the Murim, you can damage allies too. Be careful not to attack or get attacked by allies!]

Another tip popped up.

“Ah.”

So it was an ally.

No wonder the outfit was blue.

[Heavenly First Swordsman eliminated]

“Revive me.”

“?”

“I said revive me. You crazy troll!”

The user called Heavenly First Swordsman shouted at Seo-jun while lying on the ground.

“You can revive people? But how do I revive?”

Seo-jun approached him but couldn’t find a way to revive him, and eventually the timer floating above Heavenly First Swordsman’s body ended and he respawned at the spawn point.

Then he sent Seo-jun a message.

[Come to spawn point. The game’s half lost anyway and you’re dead meat for real]

-Unintentionally griefing lol

-Fucking newbie lmao

-Satan: Team killing and not reviving is a bit…

-Where did the honor go! Where did the honor go!

-The streamer is clearly a newbie lol

-Is this what you call honor???